Giving Up Power: Presidents Who Did not Run Again

We look at six presidents who chose not to seek another term including Joe Biden.  What were the motivations and decision drivers.  

Transcript

Presidents Who Decided Not to Run Again

August 2024

As I withdraw, I beg you to be loyal to your princes and to maintain a firm understanding among yourselves. What I am doing will hardly be imitated in the future, as it has rarely been done, but I will be praised for it if you justify my trust by ruling with the wisdom you have previously displayed.

Charles V Habsburg, upon his abdication of titles to his son Phillip II

“I would not wish to be charged . . . with concealed ambition.” And possess ardent wishes to pass through the vale of life in retirement, undisturbed in the remnant of the days I have to sojourn here.”

George Washington explained to Jonathan Trumbull why he would not seek a third term.

Siddhartha Gautama, Diocletian, Charles V, and Edward VIII of England.  Men from different times and geographies share one thing: they voluntarily gave up power.  Or, to use pop culture, Logan Roy of Succession, Walter White of Breaking Bad, or Tony Soprano of The Sopranos all clung to power until fate wrested from their dead hands (I am of the school that Sopranos fade to black was Tony’s assassination at the hands of the tough looking dude entering the pizzeria). 

Before the American Republic, the primary determinant of power cessation was the ultimate arbiter of everything: time. However, Presidents of the United States are not expected to serve for life.  

Our 46th president, Joe Biden, decided not to run for a new term last month. This podcast will focus on those presidents eligible to run again under what we will see as first precedent, then Amendment, but choose not to for various reasons.  We will omit those who lost an election after serving a single term, such as John Adams or Martin Van Buren.  And in the case of Van Buren, demonstrating the allure of the presidency, he ran on the Free Soil ticket eight years after losing his chance at an additional term to William Henry Harrison.

There was a time when presidents could run even after two terms. The ability to pursue a 3rd or additional term ended in 1947 when Congress approved the 22nd Amendment, ratified by the states in 1951. A candidate is limited to two runs for the presidency or just under ten years, assuming a VP succeeded in the presidency with under two years left in the original term.  Under the 22nd Amendment, Teddy Roosevelt could not have waged his 1912 third-party campaign.  Since William McKinley was shot early in his 2nd term, Roosevelt had already served nearly seven years in office.  The 22nd Amendment here is clear, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”  It gets tricky because if a president such as Barack Obama chose to run as Vice President and then succeeded to the presidency, he could do so as hard as fantastical as that scenario might seem.  But I digress.

So why did several presidents, including Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Ulysses S Grant, decide not to run for a third term? It was Washington.  We owe so much to this man.  It was winning the Revolutionary War, adding his gravitas to the Constitution, and serving as the first president.  In that latter role, arguably, his best decision was to leave after two terms.  If he had stayed for a third, dying just three years later, he would have been President for life, a terrible precedent in a nascent Republic belonging to a world that was all monarchies.  So, until a family of presidents with the last name Roosevelt came along, it was considered standard practice to leave after two terms.  

Even in the early Republic, the presidency was vigorously sought after. For those who crave power the way an ABC Bachelor contestant craves attention, it is the best thing in America.   Senators do not get a number.  Rarely do they get biographies.  One of my sources for this piece is the James Schlesinger Jr. series on presidents.  Leftist historian Michael Beschloss is a “presidential historian.”  I have never heard of a House of Representatives historian.  From Washington to Biden, the American President is always the most important person in any room they happen to inhabit.  

And today, it borders on the ridiculous.  The ginormous jet, the massive chopper saluting the stalwart marine on entry and exit, and the 18-car motorcades.  There was a debate about what to call Washington (they settled on His Excellency) because to use the usual honorifics of highness or majesty was royal, something the founders studiously wished to avoid.  But today, they travel around in the level of state that would have made Julius Caesar or Louis XIV blush.  

A president gets to appoint hundreds of high-level, very powerful positions.  They oversee a $5 trillion budget and command the most powerful military in the world.  Again, it’s heady stuff to a normal person but catnip to power seekers.  

Whenever there is a significant news story, it is always “We are now going to the White House for comment.”  This makes sense if it were, say, Israel attacking Iran.  But a flood in Mississippi or a fire in California?  A riot in Minneapolis?  None of this is the direct purview of the President, but it is to that person that goes the question and the influence and power.  I note all this to say that the decision to leave office, not take another term, is not lightly made.  Picking Katie Ledecky to win a long-distance swim race is an easy call.  Choosing to relinquish the most influential and powerful job in the world might give one pause.  

John Tyler

The first to choose not to run?  It took us nine presidents to get there.  The first five out of seven presidents served two terms, and the Adams boys were both defeated.  We also add Van Buren, who lost in 1840. William Henry Harrison became the first president to die in office, which led us to his vice president and, later, the 10th president (again, note the use of numbers), John Tyler.  

Having once been a Democrat, Tyler had switched parties to run with the Whig Harrison, but during his time as President, he tried to switch back to his original Jacksonian home.  The democrats were having none of it, favoring first Van Buren and later James Polk for the election of 1844.  With Henry Clay leading the Whig Party, Tyler had no home.  Tyler gave up after an abortive attempt to revive the old Democratic-Republican party.  When Polk won the Democratic nomination, at the urging of Andrew Jackson, he welcomed Tyler back into the party (if not into any position of power).  Tyler then dropped his candidacy altogether, noting it was his ambition “to add another bright star to the American constellation.” A reference to Texas’ annexation. A goal he shared with Polk.   

According to Tyler’s biographer, Gary May, it was not Tyler’s decision to end his run for a second term that mattered. Instead, what Tyler did in the first few months after Harrison’s death cemented the all-important legacy of which presidents obsess.  “By boldly assuming the full powers and prerogatives of the presidency upon William Henry Harrison’s death, he established what became known as the Tyler precedent. Not only ensuring the orderly transfer of power in his time but by the office “independent of the death,” guaranteeing that future accidental presidents could govern with authority.” In many regards, the 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967, codified Tyler’s actions.  Though there is undoubtedly a link between Tyler’s being both the first to succeed in the presidency due to death and his being the first not to seek a second term, much of his lack of popularity, in the end, could be laid at the feet of his decisions.   Such was Tyler’s legacy, at least according to May.  If all presidents could be relieved of any genes related to legacy desires just before their inauguration day, they would be far better presidents and human beings.  Yet, as noted earlier, the pursuit of legacy, to be remembered, drives the quest. A debate could be made about whether Tyler should be on this list, considering that he would have run again if a path had been open.  But Martin Van Buren proved that one can make their path by running on the Free Soil Party ticket.  Tyler declined this possibility and withdrew, which made him the first president not to run again. 

Tyler is not generally on the “chose not to run again” lists.  For example, I am not including Millard Fillmore and Chester Arthur because he attempted, albeit half-heartedly, despite his ill health.  However, unlike Adams and Van Buren, Tyler was rejected by his party, made a third-party attempt, and then pulled out.  Tyler, as in so many other spheres, represented a first.  

James K Polk 

It may have taken 50 years to get to the first President not to run again, but it was just four short years to get to the top 2nd, Tyler’s successor, James K Polk.  

Writing for Politico, Joshua Zeitz crafted a piece called “The President Who Did it All in One Term,” stating, “Who’s Polk?” supporters of Whig nominee Henry Clay asked mockingly. Their candidate, one of the most prominent public men in American life, seemed like the formidable favorite against a relatively unknown political washup. But in a close election, Polk — a slaveholder and full-throated expansionist — won, aided by 15,000 voters in New York who cast their ballots for a third-party anti-slavery candidate. But for their defection, Clay would almost certainly have won the state and, with it, the presidency.

Shortly after taking office, Polk privately confided in George Bancroft, a historian and Democratic political fixer, about his four priorities as President. By Bancroft’s recollection, these goals were:

• The settlement of the Oregon Question with Great Britain.
• The acquisition of California and a large district on the coast.
• The reduction of the tariff will be on a revenue basis.
• The complete and permanent establishment of the Constitutional Treasury, as he loved to call it, but as others had called it, “Independent Treasury.”

All of these goals were met to some degree. Even the last was a precursor to the Fed, created in 1913.  

At the end of his incredible term, what many historians believe to be the most effective single term in our history, Polk was in ill health.  But long before, Polk had promised not to run again.  Because, in many ways, he was the Democrat’s compromise candidate, he did not feel he had the necessary mandate of a Jackson. And consistent with this presidency, he meant what he said.  He would not have lived to see a second term, having died of cholera in June 1849, three months after his successor, Zachary Taylor, was inaugurated.  

James Buchanan

James Buchanan boasted one of the most stellar resumes for anyone who ever occupied the White House.  In contrast, his successor had one of the most thin.  Buchanan was elected five times to the House of Representatives; after an interlude as Minister to Russia, served for a decade in the Senate. He became Polk’s Secretary of State and Franklin Pierce’s Minister to Great Britain. Service abroad helped to bring him the Democratic nomination in 1856 because it had exempted him from involvement in bitter domestic controversies. Like Polk, Buchanan promised from the start of his presidency not to run for a 2nd term.  In his inaugural address, Buchanan stated, “Having determined not to become a candidate for reelection, I shall have no motive to influence my conduct in administering the Government except the desire ably and faithfully to serve my country and to live in grateful memory of my countrymen.”  

His thinking was due to his belief in limited time for presidents, and at 65, an advanced age even now but quite old by 19th-century standards.  Buchanan biographer Jean Baker, doing yeoman work covering this President, notes, “Faithful to the principle of Jacksonian Democrats and conscious of his age, he promised only one term.” Buchanan had sought the presidency at least three times before, only to bow out to other Democratic party members such as Polk and Franklin Pierce.  Pierce had also promised a single turn but tried again in 1856, showing the allure of being President. 

Even if he had changed his mind, his presidency paid for that.  Few people were more miserable in condition than Buchanan at the end of his term.  Baker adds, “he was that most dangerous of chief executives, a stubborn, mistaken idealogue whose principles held no room for compromise.  His experience in government had rendered him too self-confident to consider other views.” 

It was best for the proud but incompetent and unwise Buchanan to make that one-term pledge because the American Civil War began on his watch. If his actions were not directly responsible, his inaction made it inevitable.  

Rutherford B Hayes

For 16 years, from Lincoln’s election in 1860 until 1876, Republicans dominated politics. Yet the scandal tarred the Grant administration and opened an opportunity for the Democrats to take the presidency.  As the favorite son of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes had much in his favor. Both regular and reform Republicans liked him. He was a war hero, had supported Radical Reconstruction legislation, and championed African American suffrage. He also came from a large swing state. His reputation for integrity was excellent, and his support of bipartisan boards of state institutions endeared him to reformers. 

However, Hayes was not his party’s first choice, nor did he face an easy opponent, Samuel Tilden.  James G. Blaine, the frontrunner and the favorite of partisan Republicans, was tarnished by allegations of corruption; Oliver P. Morton, the favorite of Radicals, was in ill health; Benjamin H. Bristow, the favorite of reformers, was anathema to Grant; and Roscoe Conkling, the quintessential spoils politician, was unacceptable to reformers and Blaine. In the end, none of these candidates could muster the votes of the majority of the convention. By the fifth ballot, Hayes had picked up votes; by the seventh, he had clinched the nomination.

The closeness of the general election against Tilden meant that both sides claimed chicanery.  After the Electoral Commission awarded Louisiana to Hayes (which Tilden unofficially carried by 6,300 votes but where the Republican returning board threw out 15,000 votes, of which 13,000 were Democratic), the Democrats knew that Hayes would win. Combining frustration and calculation, they then delayed counting electoral votes with frequent adjournments and filibusters, threatening to plunge the nation into chaos by leaving it with no President on inauguration day, March 4. 

Those who calculated (distinct from those who were irrationally angry) hoped to secure concessions from politicians close to Hayes. Among their objectives were:

• The removal of the handful of troops that protected the remaining Republican state governments in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Columbia, South Carolina.
• A federal subsidy for powerful railroad magnate Tom Scott’s Texas & Pacific Railroad.
• Cabinet appointments for pre-war Whigs (hints accompanied the latter that if so rewarded, white southerners would be attracted to the Republican Party). 

For the first time in the history of the Republic, the person who received less of the popular vote also won the electoral college.  Tilden had received a quarter million more popular votes than Hayes. This fact, coupled with the partisan work of the Commission, convinced Democrats that the recent political disgraces in Washington were far from over. The sneering Democratic press—and even his bitter Republican rival Roscoe Conkling--dubbed Hayes “Rutherfraud” and “His Fraudulency.” President Hayes’ withdrawal of federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina marked a significant turning point in American political history, effectively ending the Reconstruction Era and issuing the system of Jim Crow.

Calvin Coolidge

On August 27, 1927, after serving one year as President upon the death of Warren Harding and nearly

four years after his own (landslide) election in 1924, Calvin Coolidge issued a statement. At his “Summer

White House; in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Coolidge gave Secretary to President Everett Sanders a piece of paper that said, “I do not choose to run for president in nineteen twenty-eight.” Silent Cal was not a moniker awarded incorrectly.  Grace Coolidge learned about her husband’s

announcement from a visiting Senator, Arthur Capper. She remarked, “If that is 

just like the man. He

never gave me the slightest intimation of his intention. I had no idea.”

God, I love Coolidge. Being wordy in my own right and often decrying Twitter’s capacity constraints, I

admire the person who can live within minimal linguistic means. Coolidge would have loved

Twitter’s character limit hated its transparency and would have dismissed its discourse as banal,

vapid, and useless.

As early as 1924, Coolidge had made it clear he would not run again after his 1924 campaign. Yet

Coolidge had a reasonably valid reason for his resignation. As such a reticent figure, his words are incredibly blunt. The death of his son, Calvin Jr., in 1924 took a heavy toll on the President, which some say

led to clinical depression, “When he died, the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him.” Coolidge later wrote a heart-wrenching statement in his autobiography. He also noted that another term would put him in the White House longer than any other man had been there, thinking ten years was extravagant. Coming from pretty much any other politician, this might sound false. Coming from Coolidge, the thought of exceeding the likes of Washington and Jefferson must have felt unseemly. 

There was speculation that Coolidge’s original statement, “I do not choose” to run, might be a wink to the Republican party bosses to nominate him in spite of the statement. Coolidge could claim he was being drafted, not glory-seeking, which would also fit his character. Yet, Coolidge’s popularity and party power were such that the bosses would have responded accordingly if they felt that was what he wanted. 

Coolidge may have been careful with his words but could also be blunt about his objectives. This level of subtleness was optional. Coolidge once said, “I have noticed that nothing I never said ever did me any harm.” If he wanted the presidency, this was not the time to not say anything, and on the subject, he did not say anything more until after he left office. Also, Coolidge took steps to ensure he was not drafted for the nomination. He said, “I do not approve the circulation of a petition, such as reported in the morning press, requesting me to run for President in 1928. I don’t see that anything good could come from it. I hope it will be discontinued.” Combined with his original statement, I am unsure how this is ambiguous.

Calvin Coolidge, for a host of reasons too numerous to catalog here, was one of the

greatest presidents of the 20th century and one of our best. For decades, Wilson got the excellent press as the favored pet of progressive historians. However, as more scholarship around these two very different

presidents comes to light, it is revealed that Coolidge was the great man and Wilson was the bad one. This list is

chock a block of unhealthy, embittered, or unelectable figures. Coolidge was none of these, but like

Washington chose to relinquish power. Biographer David Greenberg noted of the 30th president, “It is not quite accurate to say Coolidge was concerned that another term would somehow violate the custom of only serving two terms; he had been elected to just one. But the assumption underlying the custom—that presidents shouldn’t become too powerful—was clearly at work.”

Lyndon B Johnson

In a piece by historian Mathew Dallek written a few weeks ago, the author notes, “On March 31,

1968, Lyndon B. Johnson appeared on national television. He announced that he was partially halting

the U.S. bombing of Vietnam and that he had decided not to seek his party’s nomination for President.

“There is division in the American house now,” Johnson declared. “With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day,” Johnson said, “I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or any duties other than the awesome duties of this office—the Presidency of your country.”

His refusal to run again was, on some fundamental level, a recognition of political reality. For all his legislative

achievements (the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare and Medicaid), LBJ

Had become the face of America’s divisions. To those on the Right, Johnson had done too much, too

quickly, overloading the system with big-government programs that trampled on individual liberties.

Much of the Left viewed Johnson as the corrupt wheeler-dealer who had lied America into the

disastrous, bloody Vietnam quagmire.

LBJ faced long odds in November; his top aides feared he might not even win re-nomination. He

had barely survived a surprisingly strong primary challenge from antiwar Sen. Eugene McCarthy in New

Hampshire took 42 percent of the vote to LBJ’s 48 percent on March 12. Four days later, on March

16, New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, a long-time Johnson nemesis, declared he would challenge Johnson for the nomination.

In contrast to Joe Biden, who won a very narrow win in 2020, Johnson won his previous bid in 1964 by a

stunning 22 points in the popular vote and an overwhelming 486 to 52 electoral votes. So, just three and ½ years later, to decline to run was a massive comedown. There is speculation that

health may have been an issue. According to Mark Updegrove, a presidential historian and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. “There’s the misconception that LBJ opted not to run again due solely to the growing controversy and divisions over the war in Vietnam. That may have been part of it, but his principal concern was his health,” Updegrove said. “He had had a nearly fatal heart attack in 1955, and his family had a history of fatal heart disease. He didn’t want to put the country through the kind of crisis we had gone through with the sudden death of FDR in 1945 and Woodrow Wilson’s stroke in 1919, which left him incapacitated,” Updegrove added.

So, in many regards, Johnson’s situation, more than any other president covered here, most resembles

Johnson’s. In an era of challenge, hyper-partisanship, and foreign issues abroad, one party decided to go

with a previous candidate who had lost (Richard Nixon lost the 1960 election to John F Kennedy), while

the other party forced its candidate to go with a different choice, eventually going with the VP. As

with all historical parallels, there are key differences. Johnson’s VP was a moderate white man from

Minnesota, whereas Biden’s VP is a progressive Californian of Indian and Jamaican descent.

And this brings us to Joe Biden. In March 2020, amidst the hurly-burly of campaigning and in a close battle with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party nomination, Biden 

described his future presidency, “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said. “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.” Many believed this meant that Biden, like Polk, Buchanan, and Hayes, would only serve one term.  The playbook was simple: defeat Trump, bring normalcy back to the White House after four years of Trump, and step aside.  Biden, at 77, was the oldest man ever to seek the presidency.  

So, his decision in July was pre-determined. Except it was not.  On April 25, 2023, he announced he would seek a second term.  But as we know, on July 21, he decided not to run.  But was it really a decision?  Even after the June 27 debacle of a debate where it is evident that concerns over Biden’s age and understanding, a source of speculation even when he ran for President in 2019, finally was revealed not to be some opposition tactic but all too true.  The question quickly became whether Biden could finish his first term, much less run for a 2nd.  But Biden remained obstinate at one point, saying only the Almighty could tell him to quit.  Several Democratic politicians asked him to leave, though notably not the top ones like Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama.  

It was the actor George Clooney who got the ball rolling.  Clooney stated it was time Biden stepped down by going public with his concerns about Biden after spending time with him at a fundraiser. Clooney is not some random actor.  For decades, he has been the spider in a web of Democratic Party Hollywood connections that raise hundreds of millions of dollars.  It was not the political class that forced Biden’s hand but the donor class.  

There are some interesting patterns.  In the case of Polk, Buchanan, and Hayes, their successors died in office, one through disease and the other two through murder; in the case of the VPs succeeding upon this death, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, and Chester Arthur, respectively, all failed to achieve a term in their own right.  And Coolidge’s successor, Herbert Hoover, who won a landslide in 1928, became a one-term president after getting soundly beaten by FDR in 1932.  Yet this was due as much to the Depression as much as Hoover’s political incompetence.  

Richard Nixon, Johnson’s successor, ended his presidency in ignominy. Since Nixon was in his second term and serving after the 22nd Amendment, he could not have run again, but he did not even complete his presidency, becoming the first figure to resign, in effect giving up power.  Like Johnson and Biden, and unlike Polk, Hayes, or Coolidge, Nixon did not leave as much as was pushed.  

The list of serving two full-term presidencies in our history is not rare. We have had 13 of them.

Beginning with Washington and most recently with Barack Obama, it has been done several times.  But never from someone who followed a quitting president.  This history does not bode well for Kamala Harris, and of course, Trump, if his 2nd bid proves successful, will be a lame duck from day one.  Will Kamala break this pattern?  This much is clear. Should she win in November 2024, she will run again.  That and the sun rising in the East are two guarantees.